212 The Dominators: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Dominators: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 212
STORY NUMBER: 044
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 24 August 1968
WRITER: "Norman Ashby" (aka Mervyn Haisman & Henry Lincoln)
DIRECTOR: Morris Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Derrick Sherwin
PRODUCER: Peter Bryant
RATINGS: 5.4 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who: The Dominators

"I have seen these Dominators. We were taken aboard their spacecraft. Believe me, they're callous, without pity!"

Zoe & Cully are captured by a Quark. Jamie & the Doctor arrive in the city and are told by the council that Zoe & Cully have left. The Dominators prisoners are put to work on a site drilling for something. The Dulcian council refuse to act on the Dominator threat, but when they contact the Island and are shown a Quark, the Doctor & Jamie leave quickly to return to the island. The Doctor interferes with the travel capsule causing it to land at a different location. The prisoners are being worked to exhaustion. The council call in Tensa, the head of the emergency committee. They wait to sere what the Dominators want. Zoe finds out there's a bomb shelter they can hide in. The Doctor and Jamie arrive and find the prisoners. Cully sneaks into the museum and steels a weapon. Zoe distracts the Quark, but Jamie interrupts Cully before he can shoot. The Quarks return the remaining prisoners to the ship. The Doctor is recaptured by Toba. Toba returns to the museum for Cully and has the Quarks attack it. Jamie destroys a Quark with the gun, but the remaining Quarks attack the museum.

There's a little bit of action in this episode with Quarks attacking the museum and Jamie destroying one but my goodness that council are boring!

TENSA: My greetings, Director Senex. Gentlemen.
SENEX: Tensa, you have been informed of the emergency that has arisen?
TENSA: Yes.
SENEX: What would you advise?
TENSA: The facts of this emergency are non-conclusive. But, as I see it, we have three alternatives.
SENEX: Which are?
TENSA: If these aliens and their robots are aggressive, and as yet this is not a fact. But if they are, then we can either fight
COUNCILLOR 1: Fight?
BOVEM: Fight?
SENEX: Silence! Tensa.
TENSA: Fight, submit or flee.
BOVEM: Flee to where?
SENEX: We cannot make war. We are not able. Flight is impossible, we have nowhere to hide. And submission? To what?
TENSA: Who knows?
SENEX: So we can do nothing?
TENSA: Nothing, except wait.

I despair of them as I'm starting to despair of the story!

An oddity at the start of the episode: Episode 3 had no on-screen episode number caption

This episode exists as a 35mm film print from which the episode was transmitted. In 1977 it was missing from the BBC archives but somehow seemed to return a little while afterwards. Nobody is 100% sure where it came from, the suspicion being it was always in the film & video library but without the accompanying paperwork. If so, then the Dominators was the only complete Troughton story held in the BBC film & video library at the time.

The leader of the council Senex is played by Walter Fitzgerald. On his CV I can see Simon Peter in Paul of Tarsus, which starred Patrick Troughton as Paul. Other who actors involved include Philip Latham, Borusa in the Five Doctors, as Luke, David Spenser, Thomni in The Abominable Snowmen, as Mark, Anthony Jacobs, Doc. Holliday in the Gunfighters, as Gamaliel, Richard Leech, Gatherer Hade in The Sunmakers, as James of Nazareth, Earl Cameron, Williams in The Tenth Planet, as Simeon, David Dodimead, Barclay in The Tenth Planet, as Commander of the Temple Guard, Steve Plytas, Wigner in The Tenth Planet, as the Master, Margot Van Der Burgh, Cameca in the Aztecs and Katura in Keeper of Traken, as Mary, the mother of Mark and Roger Delgado, The Master, as a Jerusalem Jew.

Alan Gerrard plays council member Bovem. Director Morris Barry had previously used him as Cook in both parts of the Z-Cars story A Right to Live

Similarly Barry had also used Johnson Bayly, who plays academic Balan, in the second part of the Z Cars story The Nose on Your Face as the Chairman.

But probably the most famous face in the cast is the actor playing Tensa, the Chairman of Emergencies Committee, Brian Cant. He'd already appeared in Doctor Who as Kert Gantry, the space security agent who dies in The Nightmare Begins, the opening episode of The Dalek Masterplan. By this point he was a well known face on children's television, having appeared on Play School since 1964, and had already voiced both Camberwick Green & Trumpton with Chigley following in 1969.

In amongst the Council Members we have John Cross who narated several episodes on the 1975/6 series of How We Used To Live.

One of the other Council Members is Malcolm Watson, who, I think uniquely, is in all three of the BBC Quatermass serials! In The Quatermass Experiment he was a Photographer, Quatermass II a Member of Commission in The Mark & The Food and in Quatermass and the Pit he was a Museum Official in The Halfmen.

Another Council Member, Aubrey Danvers-Walker was also in The Quatermass Experiment as a Photographer in Contact Has Been Established. He can be seen later in Moonbase 3 as Mr. Edward Hopkirk in View of a Dead Planet.